HOUSE OF ASHES
By the same author:
Fiction
sun dog
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
Archipelago
Non-fiction
With the Kisses of His Mouth
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Monique Roffey 2014
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Monique Roffey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN: 978-1-47112-666-6
TPB ISBN: 978-1-47112-667-3
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47112-669-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Efforts have been made to contact every copyright holder for material contained in this book. If any owner has been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher would be glad to hear from them and make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
The City of Silk and the island of Sans Amen are fictitious. The island is located in the northernmost part of the Caribbean archipelago and was once a British colony. However, the attempted coup d’état which backfires so quickly and the ensuing events in this novel bear some relation to an attempted coup which took place in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990. Or the events may have much in common with coups d’état in other parts of the world, for example Latin America, Europe or Africa. While on the decline, the coup remains a common form of power change in the world.
For Ira Mathur and Raoul Pantin
The chant of the madman is the only salvation.
David Rudder
They are here with us now,
Those who saddle a new unbroken colt
Every morning and ride the seven levels of sky,
Who lay down at night
With the sun and the moon for pillows.
Rumi
CONTENTS
I. Jericho
WEDNESDAY, 3 P.M.,
A COMMUNE, THE CITY OF SILK,
THE ISLAND OF SANS AMEN
THURSDAY MORNING, 2 A.M.,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
THURSDAY MORNING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
II. Bathsheba
THURSDAY EVENING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
FRIDAY MORNING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
SATURDAY MORNING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
III. Mercy
SATURDAY AFTERNOON,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
SATURDAY EVENING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
SUNDAY MORNING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
IV. Fortress by the Sea
SUNDAY AFTERNOON,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
SUNDAY EVENING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
MONDAY MORNING,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
V. The Hilltop
MONDAY AFTERNOON,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
VI. L’Anse Verte
23 YEARS LATER
11 APRIL, 2013
12 APRIL, 2013
LATER THAT AFTERNOON
5 P.M., THE LIBRARY,
LIBERTY VILLAGE,
CENTRAL SANS AMEN
2 MAY, 2013
I. Jericho
WEDNESDAY, 3 P.M.,
A COMMUNE, THE CITY OF SILK,
THE ISLAND OF SANS AMEN
It was hot in the prayer room. Late July, and the air so thick with moisture every brother and sister gathered there glowed inside a halo of light. Some of the young boys occupied the front rows and Ashes was pleased to see most of them appeared clean. They looked reverent and alert, though he knew the truth was that most of them attended not just for prayers, but also for the football match afterwards. Ashes looked further forward and his gaze rested on the Leader’s shoulders; as usual, he was dressed in robes of grey. The Leader was a huge man, six foot eight, with a broad and powerful back and a muscular neck. His skin was smooth, like a child’s, the colour of caramel. His head was bent forward and he appeared to be fully absorbed, already prayerful. Ashes knew the Leader was asking for guidance for what was to come that afternoon, a plan which held elements of divine will and earthly chaos. His stomach constricted just at the thought of what lay ahead, and the lower parts of him, his loins, his thighs, felt weakened when he remembered what the Leader had said only the week before.
‘Make sure you come in early next Wednesday, yuh hear? Nex week. It going and happen.’
With a hushed thrill, the ancient prayer ritual was upon him. Ashes bowed from the waist and uttered the holy vows of remembrance which lived in his chest and enriched his soul. These words were part of him, etched like a code, and they made him able to see straight and make contact with the supreme intelligence which lived in his heart. Something came down into him. Like a breath. Or a touch to the top of his head. It spread downwards, arriving like the quiet thrum of a hummingbird’s wingbeat, like the whispers of a dense rainforest at night. The beautiful. The sensation was big and could often overpower him and it was difficult to contain for long. Now it descended, filling him with a lightness, a feeling of bliss – and he was grateful. He could never harness it. The beautiful touched on him as and when it pleased, always fleeting and temporary, like a kiss.
Two hundred souls stood in the hot, cramped room on the outskirts of the City of Silk, gathered in worship to the almighty. Around him others were whispering incantations; they held their hands out, palms up in worship. Others swayed and gazed upwards. This was his community; these were his spiritual friends on earth. Here they all met with prayerful intent and these prayers opened his heart and purified his being, Praise be to God.
The scent of the other brothers rose in his nostrils, their shirt sleeves pressed against his, their skin on his skin; some had oiled their hair, others had bathed with soap, others hadn’t bathed at all, their clothes heat-stained and days old. Altogether their bodies gave off a smell like red clay earth after the rains fell hard from the skies above Sans Amen. The experience of being here, together, was always like this, intimate and intoxicating. Each of them was solitary and each was connected and surrendered to God. Ashes felt most alive here, called inwards, as though prayer cast a spell on him and the spell was to do with this invisible force. There was a longing inside him, since childhood, since his brother River had died, to be with the beautiful. The beautiful was always there
, yet it could also be easily missed. Prayer reunited him with the beautiful. He felt aware and compassionate with everything around him, even the atoms in the air.
Ashes gave thanks and submitted his soul and said, Praise be to God, and felt kindred with the brothers and sisters around him, with the soul of every person who’d ever walked before him on earth. Again he bowed and uttered his prayers, an offering of devotion and surrender. He spoke to his God in the eternal verses and offered up his soul, and the dialogue between him and his God was awakened yet again through the power of ritual. The conversation was the same and the feeling was always wonderful and reassuring, and yet every time he worshipped it was like the first time.
When the prayers were over, some quiet moments of reflection followed. Then the Leader turned to them and spoke and his face glowed. The Leader often preached after prayers; he always had lots to say and everything he said felt important. He gazed at his followers and he smiled in his dazzling way.
‘Brothers and sisters,’ he addressed them. ‘Amongst many things, our spirituality has been stolen from us.’
‘Yesss,’ a few voices responded.
‘In times of slavery, it was taken away.’
‘Yesss.’
‘And so it isn’t, for us, a matter of conversion to this ancient path.’
He looked around. His voice was soft and clear. He spoke like a man of great learning and wisdom, like a prophet.
‘But rather, reversion. We’ve had to set our path straight again.’
‘Yesss.’
‘This is a noble truth.’
‘Praise be to God.’
‘We had been lost, separated from our great teachings for many years. But now I have led you back, my brothers and sisters, and many of you have congregated together here, black people and brown-skinned people, Africans, Indians, a rainbow of colours have joined together here in this compound. This is unique, my brethren.’
Ashes nodded in agreement. The Leader was a remarkable man who’d brought together people from all walks of life. People of all persuasions, men and women who may never have come together, had all heard of his teachings and found their way to him of their own free will.
The Leader’s face was gentle and his voice was measured, but his eyes were different today, hard as the hills.
‘Now,’ he said. And what came next was unexpected.
‘Will the sisters kindly leave the room?’ His voice was polite and yet his intention was set firm. His gaze was fixed on some distant spot far beyond the walls. He nodded for his order to be carried out and the occupants of the room began to move.
‘I ask the women to vacate the compound entirely. I have some matters to discuss with the men.’ He spoke with his usual courteousness, the voice of a man who could charm the sun down from the highest level of sky.
Ashes watched as the sisters, who were in the back rows, their hair covered, most of them in long pleated skirts, began to depart one by one, silently, through the back entrance. Ashes’ wife Jade wasn’t among them. She was at home, cooking for that evening; she’d glanced up from her iron pot as he’d departed for the commune and blown him a kiss through the air and said goodbye.
The Leader had always applied the rule of need to know. The women of the community didn’t need to know of this big plan yet. And so Ashes hadn’t told his wife Jade of the evening’s auspicious events, not yet; he trusted the Leader’s motives. All was well in their household when he left his wife cooking by the stove, deep in the dreams she held for herself. His wife liked to dream a lot, of her future, of their happiness; she often conjured her ancestors, those alive and dead, and she liked to trace the patterns of their lives and connect them up. He was a lucky man. He had married a strong and gracious woman. Here, in Sans Amen, women were considered powerful; they were as strong-minded as men; they had as much courage, as much fire in the belly. Don’t mess with the women of Sans Amen, everyone knew that. ‘I’ll be back for dinner,’ he had said to his wife that afternoon, a small and necessary lie.
The Leader cleared his throat.
‘Today,’ he said, ‘we will be making history. For ourselves, and our fellow countrymen of Sans Amen. We will be acting in accordance with the divine will of God. We will be doing what is right and necessary. We will be removing those in power.’
Ashes felt himself gently propelled backwards. Murmurs rose from the men, a mixture of agreement and barely concealed horror.
‘The time has come, my brothers, to rise up and change our fate and the fate of this small country. We will be fighting for the oppressed and for a New Society, a fairer, more civil world. We will be liberating the poor man in the street, poor men like us. Common sufferers. And they will rise up and join our struggle. And this is the will of God.’
Praise be to God, murmured the men.
The beautiful had vanished. Ashes was feeling alone and a little awkward in himself. He tried to stand erect and ready for this mighty task but the air was heavier now the doors and windows had been closed. Then the brothers seemed to know it was time and they all moved as one in a slow swaying movement. They were all collecting themselves.
Ashes felt light in his head. His body seemed to vanish from under him. From the back of the room four brothers appeared wearing green army fatigues. The plan that had seemed so far off was now underway. Every man in the room stared in a kind of wondrous paralysis, not quite knowing their impending duty, not quite ready for all of this. Some of the brothers had been informed but most hadn’t, and so a subdued chaos started to arrive in the prayer room; it was seeping into the bloodstream of every man and boy. One of the fighters wore a bandana around his nose and lower jaw. Another had put on a black woollen balaclava. Ashes could just about recognise them but didn’t really know either of them in a personal way. Both these men were close to the Leader, they were part of the small group around him, the inner cabinet; these brothers had been chosen by the Leader and sent for training far away, to camps in the desert. That much he knew.
One of these fighters positioned himself to the right and another to the left of the Leader. Now the Leader looked even more distinguished than usual, like a movie star or some kind of cricket champion. Each of these new bodyguards held a rifle and wore a bandolier of ammunition across his chest. Each had cold eyes and looked proudly intent and serious as hell. They reminded Ashes of Sylvester Stallone. All of a sudden, he didn’t feel good. He wanted to go straight back to his home, to his wife, their two sons Arich and Arkab, named after the stars they were born under; he wanted his life of books and medicinal plants which he cultivated in the yard. He had a sense that he was out of his depth, that he hadn’t quite understood what this big plan was, not in detail. He had said ‘yes’ in principle.
‘You will be useful,’ the Leader had said. ‘You have a part to play.’ The Leader had name-checked his brother, River, and of course Ashes thought of the Phantom, and his Oath of the Skull, an oath sworn to destroy greed and avarice in the stacks of comics under his bed as a child. Yes, he was there for River and for the righteous notion of being of service and taking action. If words and prayers had no effect, then it was time to use the body. This was the time to secure a New Society for himself and his sons. He reminded himself of this, even though he felt uneasy. Ashes patted for his inhaler in his pocket. Quickly, he put it to his lips and pumped two jets of cold mist into his mouth. He held his breath and kept still, counted one, two, three.
Ashes watched as two of the brothers carried in a heavy metal locker and placed it at the feet of the Leader. The Leader bent, unlocked the clasps and opened the lid. Inside there were many long rifles and he picked up one and held it high above his head.
‘Oh Gooood,’ gasped one of the young boys.
Another let out a low whistle.
‘Rambo time,’ someone joked. But the Leader glared and the men and the young boys hushed.
‘There are trucks waiting outside in the yard, just next to the exterior wall,’ he instructed. ‘You w
ill each be given a gun and ammunition. Dress appropriately. We are an army. Once we arrive, you will be assigned a duty. Those of you with training have been prepared. You will take the lead and you will fight. You others, with no training, will follow orders. You will defend and guard. I will read out a list of names of those who will come with me to the television station, the rest will go with Hal to the House of Power.’
Ashes’ vision blurred and sweat trickled from his hairline down the side of his face. He wasn’t ready. And yet he knew. He’d been told. He had come willingly, and he had lied to his wife in order to be here. The brothers now guarding the Leader seemed very organised; they began to take the rifles from the locker and hand them out. Some of the young boys who’d only really come for football seemed accepting of the situation. They had amazed smiles at the sight of the big guns. Others looked disappointed and a little lost. No football. Boys with no home, no mother or father; they were the foster sons of the Leader. Before they’d arrived at the commune they’d hawked sweets and plastic gadgets on street corners of the City of Silk or they’d run errands for the badjohns who occupied the pizzeria in the southeastern part of town.
Ashes glanced around him. Many of the older brothers seemed as anxious as he was. The room was full of nervousness. Only the four in the matching army fatigues were in tune with the Leader. Like him, they knew what was happening. Some of the men were older than Ashes and rougher than him; they had lived on the streets once too. But they were ready now, prepared for action of almost any magnitude. A few of the older men, Ashes knew, had been part of the earlier revolution in 1970; one, a feller called Greg Mason, had even shot a policeman dead and had done some time in gaol. This man had been part of the Brotherhood of Freedom Fighters and had known River.
But mostly, right then, seeing all those guns, everything was unreal. The world was hazy and far away and all the men were floating.
You coming, eh, the Leader had said. I need good men like you.
The Leader had rung him privately the week before. Ashes had been more flattered than alarmed by the phone call. It meant the Leader counted on his support, had his eye on him for backup in the ranks. Ashes hadn’t even tried to be close to the Leader.
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